Can I cite that? I think it has improved, I don't know what engine XTA is using but ZK is using latest. I think pathfollowing is even better since units slide off impassible terrain but I do get some complaints about it looking silly.

i remember when i was writing a config for shard, i wrote a periodic check if the unit had indeed left the factory. if not, i had it try another move order in another direction. much what players do, except they swear more.

I think units getting stuck in factories may be fixed in the latest development build of engine, but I can't say, we haven't tested it enough with real games . In 98.0 it happens frequently, once per game per player I would say.

The most common complaint isn't that pathfinding is stupid, it does its task quite well. But on some maps units are instructed to go into "red" terrain and get stuck.

it has certainly improved if you compare with engine 94 or 95. I tested it on the map Epic with giving constructors complex orders, and after 96.0 it works better. But it's still not as good as it was in say engine 0.78 or so. Maybe that had other problems or maybe we only remember the good stuff. Ultimately my memory is subjective.

I tried to grep this year's demos for the string _98 in the name and for "pathfinding" in content. 16 hits out of 905 demos. Not so many complaints. It's nice that zk uses the latest engine, but how many real games does zk have with the engines 94, 95, 96 and 98? I only ask that so I can know how much data there is to back up that hypothesis.